I'm having trouble with dual-booting RH 9 & Microsoft XP Pro. I
installed RH with no problem, however, I can't get LILO or GRUB to act
as the boot menu (the XP menu was unaltered). Also, after installing
RH I can't boot Windows due to an error in finding
windows/system32/hal.dll.

Boot menu system (on MBR):

Dos (points to HD1)(Tried to delete, but am not sure if it is gone)
Redhat (points to HD3)
XPPro (points to HD)

Computer Setup:

AMD Semperon 2800
512M RAM
130GB Seagate: HD1=empty(will be DOS)
HD2=XP Pro (extended)
HD5=XP Pro
HD3=/
HD4=/swap
Empty
3 1/4 Floppy: none (trying to get one)
nVidia 6200 (have drivers, will add later)


Thanks!

In message <1128722039.509833.13020@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups. com>
"Jonathon" <optiquest86@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm having trouble with dual-booting RH 9 & Microsoft XP Pro. I
> installed RH with no problem, however, I can't get LILO or GRUB to act
> as the boot menu (the XP menu was unaltered). Also, after installing
> RH I can't boot Windows due to an error in finding
> windows/system32/hal.dll.

On a bog standard windows system this usually means a broken file system. It
can be fixed (about 50% of the time) by the following method.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS WILL DO TO A DUAL-BOOT SYSTEM.

Insert the WindowsXP installation CD and boot from it. When it is offeres
choose "Repair Console" by typing R.

You may also be asked to choose a Winbdows installation, although often the
filesystem damage means it can't find one. You may be asked for the
administrator password for that filesystem

Use CHKDSK /R (notice the vital space before the /R

This will attempt to repair the filesystem. If it wirks, you will once again
be able to boot Windows. If not, you didn't lose anything, you still have to
reinstall Windows.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS WILL DO TO A DUAL-BOOT SYSTEM.

The risk would seem to be that this will repair the MBR, and wipe out the
Linux boot code, or maybe choose a linux partition to repair.

The problem could of course be something else entirely.

Alan

>
> Boot menu system (on MBR):
>
> Dos (points to HD1)(Tried to delete, but am not sure if it is gone)
> Redhat (points to HD3)
> XPPro (points to HD)
>
> Computer Setup:
>
> AMD Semperon 2800
> 512M RAM
> 130GB Seagate: HD1=empty(will be DOS)
> HD2=XP Pro (extended)
> HD5=XP Pro
> HD3=/
> HD4=/swap
> Empty
> 3 1/4 Floppy: none (trying to get one)
> nVidia 6200 (have drivers, will add later)
>
>
> Thanks!
>

--
Alan Adams
alan.adams@orchard-way.freeserve.co.uk
http://www.nckc.org.uk/

> I'm having trouble with dual-booting RH 9 & Microsoft XP Pro. I
> installed RH with no problem, however, I can't get LILO or GRUB to act
> as the boot menu (the XP menu was unaltered).

First, I would avoid reinstalling XP as long as I could, unless you
have a "ghost" copy of your previous installation, or it was simply a
vanilla instalation you haven't customized. If you reinstall XP, you
may lose your customizations. Attempting to "repair" it, is less
likely to have that problem. However, I would still wait on doing
that until I exhausted other options.

As to your specific problem, it sounds like you may have changed the
partitions as you installed RH. That can cause XP problems,
specifically if you insert or delete partitions before the XP
partition. For example, it may not have been creating the RH
partition that gave you problems, but deleting the DOS partition that
is the cause of your woes. Did XP used to boot through the DOS (FAT I
presume) partition?

Next, I see you are keeping XP in an extended/logical partition? Did
you have it there before you installed RH? Or, did you move it from a
primary partition to an extended partition when you installed RH? If
you changed it from primary to extended, then I suspect this is the
cause of your problem. As far as I know, XP (or any windows variant
for that matter) likes to have its boot code in a primary partition.
You can get XP (and the other NT, OS/2 variants) to boot in an
extended partition if you also have a FAT primary partition to keep
their boot info in, but you have to set them up that way in the
beginning.

What I suspect is happening, is that when you tell XP to boot, it
looks for an appropriate primary partition, finds HD1 which is
currently empty, but is formatted FAT ans says ah here is my primary
partition (C: drive) to find my boot info in. It then, looks for the
XP installation there and doesn't find it, because the info is in HD5,
and complains.

If I were in your shoes, and the XP partition used to be a primary
partition, then I would convert the XP back to a primary partition and
put HD4 (or HD3 & 4) in the extended partition. You will find Linux
much more cooperative about booting while the root directory is not a
primary partition.

Consider my setup:
HD1 - a FAT32 w2k partition
HD2 - a FAT32 w2k partition with also boot files for booting XP out of an extended partition
HD3 - an NTFS xp partition
HD4 - an extended partition with the following logicals inside
HD5 - /boot (ext2) where I keep grub
HD6 - / (ext2)
HD7 - /var (ext2)
HD8 - /tmp (ext2)
HD9 - linux swap
HD10 - /usr (ext2)
HD11 - /home (ext2)
HD12 - a FAT32 partition for sharing data between the various OS's
HD13 - another FAT32 partition for sharing data between the various OS's
HD14 - an NTFS xp partition which boots out of HD2
HD15 - the "system restore" partition

See, how I have most of the Windows OS's in primary partitions down at
the bottom--the only exception being HD14, and that boots out of HD2.
Believe me that makes them much happier about being booted into.

The other major difference between my setup and yours is that I use
"System Commander" as my boot menu (and that's what in the MBR).
However, I think either lilo or grub in the MBR will work too.
Especially, because if I boot the Linux partition (from System
Commander) and then tell it (grub) to boot one of the Windows
partitiions, that still works.

Hope this helps,
-Chris